All the right junk in all the right places

Because you know I'm all about that booth,
'Bout that booth 'bout that booth, no trouble
 I'm all about that booth,
'Bout that booth, no trouble
 I'm all about that booth,
'Bout that booth, no trouble
 I'm all about that booth,
'Bout that booth.

 

With apologies to Meghan Trainor for tweaking her lyrics, I’ve had that little earworm in my head for days now, and after spending way too much time shopping for and working on our antique booths, the lyrics just sort of morphed into a relevant little ditty.

 

I spent a surprisingly busy mid-December weekend humming that tune.   On Friday, Ella and I went to a health-food/vitamin store that was going out of business.   We had visited the store a week or so ago, but prices were still too high for me as a reseller.   This week, though, the owners, in a last ditch effort to rid themselves of merchandise, had “make an offer” signs on everything, including the books.

 

While Ella perused the essential oils, I scanned every book in the store, and found a tote full of good sellable items, and made an offer of $20.  The owner countered with $30, and we split the difference at $25.   I’ll easily sell them for at least 10 times that amount.

 

We also went to a few sales on Saturday morning despite the cold.  We didn’t have much luck, but did get intrigued yet grossed out by the pizza in the back of the car at one sale.  Yes, whole unboxed pizzas in the backseat of the car.  There were about 10 of them, some with slices missing, most whole, though.  I wanted so bad to snap a picture, but with the owners standing right there, I thought it would be rude.

We hope our table sells before Christmas; if not,
we'll store it until next year

 

Our last stop was a little antique shop that had advertised a sale on Craigslist.  Ella had spotted a table with elf legs in the listing’s pictures, and wanted to take a look.  As it turns out, the table was a retired Dept. 56 Krinkles Patience Brewster display table with a $350 retail price tag, and a $300 antique shop price tag.  A quick Ebay search showed that the table was actually selling between $200 and $600 online, so the antique store price wasn’t unrealistic, just out of our financial comfort zone.   However, the shop had all Christmas items at 75 percent off, and after a little discussion, we walked out with the table for an amazing $75.  It went into our antique booth the next day for $275.

 

Later Saturday, we headed to an auction about an hour down the road.  The ad on auctionzip.com made it look like an auction of Coca-Cola merchandise, but they only had the collectibles on display for an auction in January.  Irritated by the perceived bait and switch, we still managed to bid on and win a few sellable items.

 

Sunday was spent packing Ella’s Christmas boxes for relatives, and packing my weekend sales.  With today being the busiest mailing day of the year, I’m not looking forward to dragging all five big boxes to the post office this afternoon, even if they do already have postage on them.  I hate standing in line.

 

Since Christmas is only 10 days away, I fully expect online sales to slow down now, and what sales I do have, when possible, I’ll bump up to Priority just to make sure they make it by the holiday.

 

Unless something extraordinary happens, I won’t be blogging again until the first week in January.  So, I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas and/or happy holidays, depending on your level of yuletide cheer or political correctness.